Worthy As You Are: Weed Out Unhealthy Beliefs and Nourish Your Authentic Self

By Durgadas Allon Duriel

Connect with Spirit, Tend Your Inner Garden, and Plant Seeds for a Better Life

You are worthy as you are, right now. This book proves it, taking you on a journey of compassion, authenticity, and spiritual connectedness. Durgadas Allon Duriel shares empowering tools and exercises, uniting cognitive behavioral therapy with spiritual practices to help you remove harmful self-talk and cultivate good habits. Learn how to healthfully process difficult emotions and experiences around shame, chronic illness, anxiety, self-sabotage, aging, and more.

Guiding you through nine important realms of life, including body image, relationships, self-love, sexuality, and career, Durgadas leads you toward greater freedom within yourself. You'll also discover techniques for self-care and compassionate thinking, such as affirmations, meditation, and journaling, while learning how to avoid spiritual bypassing. With this book, you can shift your everyday thoughts from negative to nourishing and embrace your authentic self.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide
• Release date: Sep 8, 2022
• ISBN: 9780738772516

Durgadas Allon Duriel

Durgadas Allon Duriel (San Francisco, CA) is a licensed clinical social worker and a certified holistic health practitioner working in private practice. He is a formal practitioner of magic with more than twenty years of experience and has practiced Yoga and meditation for over fifteen years. He holds a master's degree in social welfare from UCLA.

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About the Author

Durgadas Allon Duriel (San Francisco, CA) is a licensed clinical social worker and a certified holistic health practitioner working in private practice. He is also an astrologer, yogi, and magic worker, having practiced magic since childhood and eventually discovering modern Paganism and Wicca in high school and later initiating into a Hermetic order in 2005. He trained there intensively for two and a half years, focusing on astrology, Kabbalah, yoga, tarot, and ritual, which he continues to study and practice. He holds a master’s degree in social welfare from UCLA.

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Llewellyn Publications

Woodbury, Minnesota

Copyright Information

Worthy As You Are: Weed Out Unhealthy Beliefs and Nourish Your Authentic Self © 2022 by Durgadas Allon Duriel.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any matter whatsoever, including Internet usage, without written permission from Llewellyn Publications, except in the form of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

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First e-book edition © 2022

E-book ISBN: 9780738772516

Book design by Christine Ha

Cover design by Cassie Willett

Figures (pages 51 & 52) by Mary Ann Zapalac

Llewellyn Publications is an imprint of Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Duriel, Durgadas Allon, author.

Title: Worthy as you are : weed out unhealthy beliefs and nourish your

authentic self / by Durgadas Allon Duriel.

Description: First edition. | Woodbury, Minnesota : Llewellyn Publications,

2022. | Includes bibliographical references. | Summary: "How to

healthfully process difficult emotions and experiences around shame and

guilt, chronic illness, anxiety and depression, self-sabotage, and

aging. The book also explores spiritual bypassing and teaches techniques

that help promote well-being like mindfulness practice and connecting

with the divine"— Provided by publisher.

Identifiers: LCCN 2022019725 (print) | LCCN 2022019726 (ebook) | ISBN

9780738772417 (paperback) | ISBN 9780738772516 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: Self-actualization (Psychology)—Religious aspects. |

Well-being. | Emotions—Religious aspects. | Thought and thinking. |

Psychology, Religious.

Classification: LCC BL65.S38 D36 2022 (print) | LCC BL65.S38 (ebook) |

DDC 204/.4—dc23/eng20220822

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019725

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022019726

Llewellyn Publications does not participate in, endorse, or have any authority or responsibility concerning private business arrangements between our authors and the public.

Any Internet references contained in this work are current at publication time, but the publisher cannot guarantee that a specific reference will continue or be maintained. Please refer to the publisher’s website for links to current author websites.

Llewellyn Publications

Llewellyn Worldwide Ltd.

2143 Wooddale Drive

Woodbury, MN 55125

www.llewellyn.com

Manufactured in the United States of America

For everyone who was ever told they

were less than for being themselves.

Acknowledgments

Thanks to the healers, teachers, mystics, and friends I have known in my life, who have all contributed to this book to some degree, large or small. Specifically, thanks to my editors Elysia Gallo and Lauryn Heineman, whose input was invaluable in polishing this work. To my first spiritual teacher and three degree mentors in my spiritual training, who helped me discover the power I had. To my second spiritual teacher, who taught me how to open my heart and kneel within it. Finally, to the wonderful city of San Francisco, where this book was written and I found my home, and whose spirit contributed much to it.

Disclaimer

The material in this book is not intended as a substitute for psychotherapy from a licensed professional, nor is it intended as psychiatric, psychological, or medical advice for the treatment of any individual person or health condition. Readers are advised to consult with their personal healthcare professionals regarding any mental or physical health conditions they have. The publisher and author assume no liability for any actions that may occur from the reader’s use of the content contained herein.

Contents

Introduction

Part 1: Foundations and Preparations

Chapter 1: The Basis and Basics of Our Work Together

Chapter 2: Centering Spirit in the Process

Chapter 3: Preparing Ourselves for the Journey

Part 2: The Affirmative Talks

Chapter 4: Body Image and Body Positivity

Chapter 5: Romantic Relationships

Chapter 6: Self-Love

Chapter 7: Gender

Chapter 8: Sexuality

Chapter 9: Career and Productivity

Chapter 10: Money and Material Goods

Chapter 11: Family

Chapter 12: Home

Part 3: Navigating Some of Life’s Difficulties

Chapter 13: What Is Spiritual Bypassing?

Chapter 14: Listening to Anger and Guilt

Chapter 15: Chronic Mental and Physical Health Conditions

Chapter 16: Self-Sabotage and Transitions

Conclusion: Gardening Together

Bibliography

chapter art

Introduction

It’s not okay to be you. You are not good enough as you are."

These messages exist in one form or another in so much of the world today that we may not even register them most of the time, but they are there, whether intentionally or not. We might see an airbrushed and edited photo of a model that makes us feel self-conscious about our bodies or a parade of luxury that we can’t afford in a film. Perhaps there’s a gross lack of representation of a group we’re a part of in popular media or an advertisement for a new product that promises to revolutionize our lives, which are painted as less than to some degree without it. If we change ourselves in the ways we’re being guided to though, buy the novel item, or make ourselves more like what we see that is presented as valuable, maybe we’ll arrive at okay or good enough. If not? Too bad for us.

Many if not most of us received messages about not being okay as ourselves or good enough as we are from family members too, who themselves likely received messages like these from others in a cycle sometimes going back centuries. It is also common to hear some version of this messaging from our peers while growing up, and to implicitly and sometimes explicitly be exposed to it in school and other community settings. Even if no one has ever said words like these to us outright, most of us have experienced and internalized these sentiments in some fashion because of popular media and advertising, as in the examples shared above. I think people often don’t even realize that this messaging is part of what they’re saying or implying, as it is such a subtle, constant element in our world.

The impact of these sentiments on our lives, that we are not okay as ourselves or good enough as we are, is profound, particularly the more we feel targeted by them, which can vary from group to group, family to family, and so on. I believe these kinds of sentiments and the ramifications of them are among the root causes of much of the low self-esteem and insecurity we see in the world today.

As adults, many of us who grew up conditioned by these messages want to find a greater sense of well-being and peace in our lives but don’t know how. Having been constantly influenced to seek what is valuable outside of ourselves, that’s where most of us look. We do things like participate in fitness fads and trends, buy fancy gadgets, climb the corporate ladder, and jump through all sorts of hoops in pursuit of happiness, and where do we end up? We might have some pleasurable and rewarding experiences, feel proud of ourselves at times, and certainly feel more comfortable if we went from financially insecure to financially stable, but often, we don’t stray that far from where we started in terms of our inner lives. We still experience a mix of good days and bad days with our mindset being largely at the mercy of the rollercoaster of life. Even with success, we may feel caught in the web of our past, trapped in thoughts that feel destructive and unsupportive, or unable to see a path to feeling sustainably better from where we are. We might still feel an ocean away from okay or good enough.

What if there was another way, though, and that began with recognizing that what we have been told throughout our lives, sometimes from thousands of different sources, is untrue: that it is okay to be ourselves, as we are, right now? Not only is it okay, but it is sacred, and we are always good enough. We may not all be equally talented or capable when it comes to competition and completing tasks in the human world, but as divine beings in human form who are perfectly imperfect, we are always okay and good enough, and nothing can change that. In working on ourselves in a manner that helps us own and experience this, we can make sustainable steps toward the wellness, peace, and contentment we seek. The greatest source of the emotional healing and well-being we desire is already within us. We just need to find it.

That was what I needed to learn many years ago when I found myself at the doors of an intensive spiritual training program. Back then, I felt like my life was doomed. I had grown up being persistently bullied in elementary and middle school, to the point of dehumanization in the latter, and I’d spent most years since then experiencing a terrible, suffocating depression at some point. I had also been ill in some manner for almost all my life, which continues to this day, and that weighed on me mightily, in addition to long-standing family problems that were rough too. I will elaborate on these issues in the sections of the book where they are relevant, but suffice it to say that I was a mess in many ways. A silver lining I found in feeling so broken, though, was that it humbled me enough to seek help and heed the guidance I was offered.

For the next two and a half years, I challenged myself to do whatever my teacher and mentors in my spiritual training advised and to glean what value I could from what they taught. As I did that, my life changed for the better at a dramatic pace. I learned two primary things that I will share and elaborate on in this book: that I could change my life by changing my thinking and that I could connect with the divine in a palpable way. I experienced both of those things profoundly during my spiritual training and watched as my life began to blossom in light of them. I was in holistic health school at the same time, and that integrated a focus on self-care and wellness with the work I was doing that greatly benefitted me. I also read the Tao Te Ching, which I would go on to read from daily for about five years, and it instilled in me the importance of having compassion for myself and others. Compassion became the core of my approach to life and is central in this book. I was amazed as I went from being a mess to someone who could weather the adversity in my life and thrive much of the time, and who could set a variety of intentions and realize them. My everyday thoughts went from feeling poisonous to nourishing, which stunned me then and still makes me smile to think about now. This isn’t to suggest that I don’t have tough days and occasionally get caught up in trauma cycles, but my life is so much better, to a degree that it often surprises people who knew me before my spiritual training.

After I left the spiritual training program, I studied for many years with a spiritual teacher from India who emphasizes love, compassion, and service and who continues to be an inspiration in my life. My experiences with her deepened my understanding and appreciation of those things. I also learned that many of the techniques I was taught for working with my mind in my spiritual training are paralleled in a popular, research-supported brand of psychotherapy: cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). I thrilled at the prospect of being able to do work that yielded such powerful results in my life as my day job and subsequently went to graduate school to become a social worker. Since graduating in 2013, I have worked within a cognitive behavioral framework in each of my jobs, whether as a psychiatric case manager or a psychotherapist.

Our Work Together

The notions that we can change our lives by changing our thinking and that our thoughts affect our experience of life and shape our reality are hardly new. We can see analogous concepts to these in the teachings of the Buddha and the sages of Hinduism, as well as the writings of Shakespeare. What the pioneers of cognitive therapy, including Dr. Alfred Ellis and Dr. Aaron T. Beck, did with them that is new is systematize them into clinical interventions that can be practically applied in everyday life. It’s not too difficult to intellectually recognize that how we conceive of life influences how we experience it. We can even casually observe this when we look around the world and see cultural concepts that differ. For example, some cultures embrace sexuality with unapologetic relish while others shy away from it. Some highly value work and achievement while others prioritize family life more. In all of this, we see a theme: cultures can imprint beliefs upon us that shape how we perceive life. Recognizing that thought influences perception isn’t enough, though, if we want to use that knowledge to make holistic, healthy changes. This is where CBT skills come in.

In this book, I present a refined, simplified version of the CBT model featuring the techniques I have seen be most effective with my clients and in my personal life. As we develop as therapists, we tend to naturally recognize what works well and what doesn’t in our practice, and what feels superfluous or essential. We grow as we accumulate new information, experience, and insight, and this shapes our approach. The results of my version of that process are what I present here. The system in this book also integrates key elements I have learned from my other studies and experiences, like the centering of compassion and tools that help promote well-being, including affirmations and mindfulness practice. I share a step-by-step method I designed for healthfully processing difficult emotions too. CBT techniques help us dismantle the beliefs within us that don’t support our well-being—like that we are not okay as ourselves—and cultivate supportive self-talk that aids us in feeling better. They help us deal with the difficulties that linger with us from the past and embrace the opportunities before us in the present. In proper CBT, that is usually where the mental work ends, but it is not where our work concludes here.

As I shared earlier, I first learned these kinds of techniques in a spiritual training program, and because of that, I witnessed the power that comes when they are wedded to spiritual practice. I believe that the dramatic results I experienced happened not only because I was on top of my mind with cognitive tools, but also because of the intimacy with the divine that my spiritual practices fostered in me. The spiritual experiences I had inspired me, motivated me, nourished me, guided me, and supercharged me to deepen with this work.

Consequently, the divine is also at the core of our work together: connecting with it, working with it, and experiencing it as part of our everyday lives. Though I do believe an atheist can probably find value from most of the practices in this book, it is intended for a spiritual audience. What you individually believe about the divine can vary substantially from me, which we will explore more later, but the integration of spirituality with personal development and healing, in my experience, is immensely helpful. We will touch upon it many times in this book.

I also want to emphasize that the work we do here is not about adding new layers of belief to ourselves or climbing some inner mountain to prove our worthiness. We will use CBT techniques to challenge the negative conditioning we have received that stands in the way of our authenticity, and then in partnership with the divine, we will work to release that conditioning and connect with our deeper selves. The thoughts we cultivate in that objective affirm our growing awareness of what is already within us more than they create something new. In doing this, we can experience a profound degree of freedom and healing and also come to touch our natural well-being. That is the sense of ease within ourselves that most of us had as children as we lived in alignment with the flow of the divine. From there, you can use the freedom and healing you experience to whatever ends you desire, and none of this is to suggest that there isn’t value in working to hone qualities within ourselves or taking substantial action in the world. The problem comes when we look for our worth and peace in what we can do and achieve. When people complete the work we will undertake here, they are generally far more able to enjoy whatever else they decide to do with their lives because of not looking for their self-worth in that, celebrating it for what it is instead.

The tools in this book can also aid us in transforming our lives in a profound manner and realizing our intentions for ourselves because they help us step out of our own way. When a goal is attainable for us, which means that we could feasibly achieve it from where we are given our ability, capacity, privilege, and access to opportunities, what usually keeps most of us from accomplishing it is forces within us: the beliefs and mental and behavioral patterns we have that hinder us in achieving it, alongside our innate resistance to change. In my experience, these beliefs and patterns often come from environmental influences and our reaction to them. Practicing the techniques in this book can foster our ability to navigate through these obstacles and claim our power to create positive change in our lives, and we feel better and better about ourselves as we do so. Not because of making dramatic shifts that win us self-worth trophies, but through appreciating how miraculous, wonderful, and divine we already are.

This book is for anyone who feels ready to start that journey and who is willing to devote some time most days each week to personal and spiritual development. At first, that can be as little as five minutes a day, growing incrementally as the process unfolds, expands, and deepens. Our work here occurs in three primary segments, which compose the three parts of this book. In the first part, we explore the framework and root techniques of the overall approach. This is where we sift through the mechanics of how CBT works, as well as learn a practice for connecting with the divine. We will also review ways to prepare ourselves for the work ahead. In part 2, we move through a series of what I call affirmative talks. These are explorations of some challenges and difficulties many of us face within a variety of life domains, followed by affirmative statements to help us undo unhealthy conditioning in those areas and feel better. Part 3 looks at difficult emotions and experiences that are natural parts of life and ways to approach them that are informed by the spiritually integrated system in this book. While many spiritual models pathologize or minimize difficult emotions and experiences, I have found tremendous value, empowerment, and freedom in accepting them and meeting them head-on. In that part, I will share some ways to do that.

The Inner Garden

During our work on the mind, I feature a metaphor of it as an inner garden, which I also use as the structure for how I frame the material in those sections. Many people have conceived of the mind this way before, and some of the reasons why I favor this metaphor will become apparent as it shows up in the book. For now, though, I want to share that I use this metaphor in part because of how CBT is sometimes perceived and even practiced. It can come across as being a rigid, almost robotic type of modality in which the human mind is likened to a computer. If we change the inputs (i.e., thoughts), for example, we get different outputs (i.e., emotions and perceptions). The whole process can seem sterile and like it doesn’t grasp the complexity, depth, and texture of the human experience. Many people are turned off by CBT because of this.

In contrast to that, the inner garden is organic. Our thoughts and beliefs make up the plants within our respective inner gardens, and they grow in a natural way. Some are lustrous and wonderful, while others are harmful weeds. In our efforts together, we undertake the work of planting supportive thoughts and nurturing them and weeding the thoughts and beliefs that are unhealthy or unhelpful for us, and we allow the processes of life to unfold within us. As we care for our inner gardens consistently, as we would a physical garden, they begin to change, resulting in an improvement in our mindset and mood. Recall for a moment the most amazing garden you’ve ever seen or imagine a magnificent one. How would it feel if your mind were like that?

Another reason I use this metaphor is that a garden, at its best, is a demonstration of humanity working with nature in alignment with an intention. It reflects the harmony possible between human creativity and ingenuity and the natural world. Similarly, inner gardening is about cultivating harmony with what we authentically are, our inner nature, through the way we think. It is an organic process of marrying intention with self-discovery, one of deep caring and enrichment. As we will repeatedly see in this book, the way we think of things affects how we perceive them. Consider how different the process of working on ourselves could be by thinking of it as inner gardening as opposed to programming our minds like a computer.

In terms of how to read this book, I recommend that you first read it all the way through, completing the exercises along the way. Various sections are meant to be reread, and in those sections, I include suggestions for how to do that. Most of all, I want to emphasize that this is a journey of compassion, self-love, authenticity, and spiritual connectedness, and those are the true great powers at the heart of our work together. I know some of this may seem very simplistic, and it is. Let it be. Healing does not need to be complicated. There is nothing here to achieve, and there is nothing to prove. We are holy and worthy exactly as we are. Let me show you what helped me realize that within myself so that it may help you do the same.

[contents]

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Part 1

Foundations and Preparations

In this part of the book, we will review the foundational material of our work together. Chapter 1 focuses on the theories and basic techniques of the system we’ll use. As a therapist, I have found that some people find motivation in understanding the nuts and bolts of how the healing and wellness approach they are working with functions. They prefer to know why we do what we’re doing. Others could not care less, and there is a spectrum of interest in between those extremes. If you are one of the latter types of people, feel free to skim the portions of the first and third chapters that are heavy on theory, though I encourage you to perform all the exercises and pay close attention to the techniques. These techniques will equip you to practice this system independently beyond what is shared here.

In Chapter 2, I focus on the divine: ways to connect with it and manners in which it is relevant for the work we will undertake together. As I wrote in the introduction, I believe spirituality supercharged my healing journey, and I can’t emphasize enough how much daily spiritual practice was part of that. In this chapter, I include instructions for performing a daily meditation that has profoundly benefitted me and others, and I review some of the amazing powers I have witnessed in our relationship with the divine that are helpful to know about when working on ourselves. Spirituality is the greater backdrop upon which this entire approach is founded, and we will explore that in this chapter as well.

Chapter 3 mostly includes preparational material that I think is helpful to be aware of as we embark upon this journey. There are some difficulties that surface for most people when performing work like this, and in my experience, it is best to know about that and